Aino gradient - a collaborative speaker project

Thank you for your interest an comments & ideas! This is a long thread with many evolution stages of AINOgradient speakers.

A long story made short about AINOs...

The basic consept is copied from 1980's Jorma Salmi design Gradient 1.x series - a very good review here The Gradient 1.3 Revisited

I studied Linkwitz and Kreskowsky homepages and got personally helped by Rudolf Finke. Minidsp and REW made all this possible for me and are key factors in multiway dipoles for dummies! The shape of bass module comes from a very popular glass by Aino Aalto, wife of architect Alvar Aalto. My daughter and grandmother are also named Aino.

Acoustically Ainos are monopole below 100Hz, cardioid 100-300Hz, dipole from up there (highest dipole null around 6kHz) In early stages I struggled with rearside radiation anomalies of cone drivers and reflections from the large magnet of Fountek Neo3.H. These were fixed by using B&G Neo8 and Neo3 planar units. Another great struggle has been indoor measurements, remember the weather here in Scandinavia!

For the last 9 months I have only made minor adjustments in minidsp settings, mainly to optimize acoustic responses of each driver and tonality of the system. I am very happy with the present performance, and so were the people at the Finnish diy-audio event - AINOgradient got the nomination for "Best Sound in the Show"

Here indoor-measurements at 1.5m distance. RTA/steady state response in-room is 16Hz -18kHz in a slightly descending (ideal) room curve. The upper end is limited because of Icepower D-class amplifier's input-impedance problem (but my aged ears don't hear that)

Link is dead, attached is the article courtesy of wayback machine
 

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I finally had time to make vertical directivity measurements!

Angles estimated with 5 deg steps up to 30 degrees. Indoor with quite many disturbing reflections, so I will show only smoothed 4ms gated measurements. Lower limit in graphics is 200Hz, keep that in mind when looking and comparing to other similar from eg. ASR or Erin's Audio Corner

Present eq-xo is done with Minidsp 2x4HD using parametrics (not FIR). Slopes are basically LR2 but with elliptic tails. In v35 lowest xo is 150 Hz, second 600Hz, then 4500Hz. Previous v33 has higher SW and WM xo. Peaking above 10kHz can be eq'd easily, but it's not disturbing to anyone.

ainogneo83 2x4hd v33 all ind 20ms 13.jpgAINOgneo83 2x4hd v35 in 0-45 horiz GD+Phase.pngainogneo83 2x4HD v35 in horiz 0-45 spl.png

4ms 1/3 smoothing 100-20 000Hz

ainogneo83 2x4HD v35 in vertical 0-30 4ms 13 normal.pngainogneo83 2x4HD v35 in vertical 0-30 4ms 13.png

9ms 1/12 smoothing 20-20 000Hz

ainogneo83 2x4HD v35 in vertical 0-30 norm.pngainogneo83 2x4HD v35 in vertical 0-30.png
 
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Room response of both L and R playing one by time, 500ms MMM

Right speaker's planars seem to be 5dB quieter - I must check settings and most likely lift their gain. Amp modules are similar and positioning is mirror image practically.
ainogneo83 2x4 v35 LR MMM 500ms 12.jpg ainogneo83 2x4 v35 LR MMM 500ms 112.jpg
 
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It's dangerous to have a day off from work... Sipping coffee-stimulant and reading diyaudio reminded me about an annoyance I've had for 11 years now.


My center is a 2-way Infinity HCS5 from early 1990s. It's phase rotation is away from Ainos, so multichannel sound is never focused the way it should be. I have been trying to find a reasonable solution for this without any ideas worth testing. Until today - I want to make a passive sealed box 2-way with LR2 at 800Hz. Still there are serious limitations: 1) Available space is difficult and small 2) it must look neat 3) I must settle to limited freq range, perhaps too high for male voice 4) I can't design a passive xo

I have a few xo components and leftover drivers, fullranges, woofer, dome mid, automotive tweeter etc. First an ugly raw box for sound test, then more effort for better looks if the sound benefit is worth the effort.

ainot 1024.jpg center 1024.jpg
 
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Hello Juha,
So you are wanting to go multichannels for a home théâtre in your living room?
,Into my living room (40 square meters), reality is brutal. TV with its monorail source is working like yours: near à wall. Sound is very well difused ans more natural (it is a LG so forgett the Prat effect for the movies). As soon as I listen the loudspeakers , same layout as your, whatever my room is damped and the speakers are not bad at imaging, this is less natural, real.

So whatever the Dolby atmo, Dirac, or third party EQ, one could have à help from, I even do not want to put a foot in HT.

Cheers, glad to see you still have your good OB.
 
I have had the tv sound and all other sources coming thru AV receiver to 5 speakers for 25 years! Yamaha RXV has easy to use dsp and I can choose sound format easily. For music only I use normal stereo setting (Pure Direct). I don't need a subwoofer because Aino mains go down to 20Hz
 
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Wanted to ask or to re-ask (so sorry if already)

If my memory serves me well, which is not always if I remember correctly 🤔

You testimonied than the 12" (100 hz to 600 hz iirc) in OB and baffle less as the Ainos' could not really sounds good if the upper register up to the tweeter where not dipoles as well. Or it gives an odd patern in the room not translating in a good sound for the sweet spot ?

Imagine something in the near spirit : 12" open for 100 Hz up to 300Hz 12 dB low pass and high pass, then a 5" or two semi open (U load) and a sealed 1" tweeter with WG or not (MMT arrengement for instance). In such way the 5" is loaded U way so back open (I think of a 15cm diameter pipe between the back of the 5" and 30 cm long and opened back. I think 300 hz of pass band is a mess filter wise but I am not sure; 1.5 octave is few.

Do you think it could merge well with a 12" baffle less or almost no frame and such sorta of hybrod OB in the mid, with finally a 1.5k or 2 K Hz sealed tweeter for the upper register?

Better to go direct sealed with a 12" up to 250 Hz then the opened mids (something like the Finalist from Curst campbell but on stereoids.)

Do not want to be off topic, feel free to answer or not, no probs 🙂 . I could ask later in a new thread as well. Just simple intelectual curiosity

Thanks
 
I like the way you uses 9 edges to sim the OB baffle.

So you entirely using it before the null. So mane advantage is no box coloration here and it speads wild up to the bump before the null.

Thanks I wasn't remembering that.

Always wondered two things with the Edge : is the diameter of the radiating surface is the one of the cone or the one of the entire frame. Here for instance 30 cm diameter is not the emmiting surface of a 12". And also as if the soil distance was inclued in the computing ?! Maybe sligthy different in Vituix embeded version.

Surely not important in your sim but maybe beginns to matter with lower drivers ?

Anyway thanks for the illustration with the screen captures ! 👍
 
Radiating driver diameter should be real, not nominal. To be exact, it's measured from top of the surround rubber roll. Look at driver specifications including crossection. But an Edge sim is just a coarse sim!

Early versions of Ainos had horn-loaded electostatic tweeter. Then I added a bckside dome tweeter, then finally changed to open back magnetoplanar. Linkwitz used two opposing domes. The purpose is to make decay in the room constant through the spectrum, and you can hear the difference even with 5-6 kHz xo.

ainogneob v2 vs neo v11 0¤ decay csd.png
 
It's dangerous to have a day off from work... Sipping coffee-stimulant and reading diyaudio reminded me about an annoyance I've had for 11 years now.


My center is a 2-way Infinity HCS5 from early 1990s. It's phase rotation is away from Ainos, so multichannel sound is never focused the way it should be. I have been trying to find a reasonable solution for this without any ideas worth testing. Until today - I want to make a passive sealed box 2-way with LR2 at 800Hz. Still there are serious limitations: 1) Available space is difficult and small 2) it must look neat 3) I must settle to limited freq range, perhaps too high for male voice 4) I can't design a passive xo

I have a few xo components and leftover drivers, fullranges, woofer, dome mid, automotive tweeter etc. First an ugly raw box for sound test, then more effort for better looks if the sound benefit is worth the effort.

View attachment 1363519 View attachment 1363520
I've been tinkering...

I have a pair of CSS FR125S fullranges and two Peerless automotive tweeters laying around somewhere. Edge sim of twin 28mm tweeters have decent dispersion up to 5kHz and most likely they could pbe highpassed 800Hz for modest spl. CSS have XBL2 motors and rather good Xmax so 100Hz should be easy task for a pair. A quick sketch attached, but woofer section should and can be higher because it will be behind the 65" QLED panel. I don't remember the model of tweeters, must find those...


2x28mm edge.pngtranssections.png
 

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